Jew World Order

Last week we featured a story about the law firm Milbank withdrawing a gift to Harvard Law School to sponsor student events because a small part of its grant had been used for a pro-Palestinian event. The story has been treated by the American Lawyer, the Harvard Crimson, and the New York Times. The Times said that Milbank and Harvard Law have now redirected the gift, for $1 million over five years, to other purposes. A group of scholars who are concerned about the issue of donor influence have published the open letter that follows, titled “An Open Letter to the Law School Community on Law Firm Efforts to Limit Students’ Free Speech.” They seek more signatories (at the link). –Editors

February 22, 2016

An Open Letter to the Law School Community:

As law school faculty, students, administrators and staff based in the U.S. we join together to express our grave concern about an incident that has arisen at Harvard Law School that has troubling implications for all of our institutions.

Each of us supports and fosters at our law schools an atmosphere of robust debate among law students on matters of public concern, welcoming a wide array of perspectives on the most difficult legal and political issues of the day. We believe that a firm commitment to principles of free speech and academic freedom enriches law students’ education and is essential to one’s training as a lawyer and advocate. Student-run conferences, panels, speaker series, moot courts and other activities play an essential role in the creation of law school communities as sites where diverse viewpoints on a wide range of issues can be explored, debated and contested. Student-run events and law student groups are critical for fostering student leadership, incubating new ideas, and producing the next generation of legal professionals.

Student-run events require financial support and they often gain this support from funders outside the law school, in many cases from law firms. No matter the context, the high value we place on free speech and robust debate will be threatened if students perceive that their activities may be de-funded should they express opinions disfavored by a law firm funder. It is unacceptable for a law firm to provide a general gift to a law school to support student events – intended to be administered by law school staff – and then seek to exercise control over the content or viewpoints being expressed by students that seek funding from that general fund.

Unfolding events at Harvard Law School (HLS) raise the specter of illegitimate efforts by an external funder to censor or influence the viewpoints being expressed at student-run events. In 2012 the law firm Milbank LLP made a gift to Harvard Law School ($200,000 annually for five years) to establish the “Milbank Tweed Student Conference Fund” (the Fund). The Fund was set up to subsidize student events at Harvard, yet Milbank informed HLS that it desired to discontinue the Fund after it learned about an event sponsored by the student group Justice in Palestine that had received $500 in funding from the “Milbank Tweed Student Conference Fund” to cover catering expenses, and the students had acknowledged the Fund’s support in their announcements for the event – something required by law school policy. Assuming the truth of these allegations as reported in numerous news sources, they raise considerable concerns about the power of influential donors to undermine the principle of free speech and debate in the law school context. The fact that the donor in question here is a large law firm for whom many law students would like to work after graduation is of even greater concern.

Most of our schools receive substantial funding from law firms to subsidize student-run events. Some of our schools have been recipients of funds from Milbank. We are concerned that the experience at Harvard will have a chilling effect on the breadth of viewpoints, topics, and debates that students will feel free to take up in their events, whether it be Israel/Palestine or other highly contested issues such as government efforts to force tech companies to override privacy controls; corporate responsibilities to protect human rights; the meaning and scope of religious liberty; the constitutionality of gun control measures; the legality of state-sponsored targeted killings; or efforts to prosecute Wikileaks, to name only a few.

We urge Milbank to model a commitment to law schools as a particularly important context where robust debate on matters of public concern must be celebrated rather than censured, and where principles of free speech must be observed and defended most adamantly. As educators and students of law we neither need nor expect to be protected from ideas some may find uncomfortable or offensive. Rather we regard the contestation of ideas through vigorous debate to be a necessary and essential part of both legal training and of legal practice itself. Any efforts to censor, influence, or punish the expression of particular viewpoints in events sponsored by law students run contrary to the very spirit of the practice of law and of legal education, which must be “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” Tolerating anything less is bad for legal education and bad for the legal profession.

(Affiliations are listed for purposes of identification only. No signer of this letter claims to speak for the university with which he or she is affiliated.)

Katherine Franke
Sulzbacher Professor of Law
Columbia Law School

Brian Leiter
Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence
Director, Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values
University of Chicago

Steven H. Shiffrin,
Charles Frank Reavis Sr. Professor of Law, Emeritus,
Cornell University Law School

Sarah H. Cleveland
Louis Henkin Professor of Human and Constitutional Rights
Faculty Co-Director, Human Rights Institute
Columbia Law School

Sarah Knuckey
Lieff Cabraser Heimann and Bernstein Clinical Associate Professor of Human Rights Director, Human Rights Clinic
Faculty Co-Director, Human Rights Institute
Columbia Law School

Philip G. Alston
John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law
Faculty Director and Co-Chair, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice
New York University School of Law

Kendall Thomas
Nash Professor of Law
Columbia University

Cynthia Grant Bowman
Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Feminist Jurisprudence
Cornell Law School

Sheila R. Foster
University Professor
Albert A. Walsh Professor of Law
Faculty Co-Director, Urban Law Center
Fordham University

Sara-Anne Alkhatib
Columbia Law School (JD Class of 2017)

Bassam Khawaja
Columbia Law School (JD Class of 2015)

Elizabeth O’Shea
Columbia Law School (LLM Class of 2016)

Martin S. Flaherty
Leitner Family Professor of International Human Rights Law
Founding Co-Director, Leitner Center of International Law and Justice
Fordham Law School

Erez Aloni
Assistant Professor
Whittier Law School

Tracy Higgins
Professor of Law
Faculty Director, Leitner Center for International Law and Justice
Fordham Law School

Kate L. Morris
Columbia Law School (JD Class of 2016)

Holly Maguigan
Professor of Clinical Law
New York University School of Law

Amna Akbar
Assistant Professor
Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University